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Baseball and Gaining the Off-Season Advantage

The off-season can pass by in the blink of an eye. Even though the cold and dark months between November and March remind you nothing of the game of baseball they are the most crucial for ensuring you’ll be at your best come opening day. What you do with these months is what separates you from, and elevates you above, other players.

How Bad do you Want to Get Better?

I can vividly remember sitting in our small high school gym and being handed a blank piece of paper by our coach. We were instructed to fill the piece of paper with our goals.

TEAM

Win Back-to-Back Conference Championships

Win Sectional Title

State Champs

PERSONAL

Gain 10 lbs.

Lead by example (Everyday!)

Make all routine plays in field

.300 batting average

This list was from my junior year of high school. Each year I would strive for more in my goal list. This was only possible because within each goal was an action plan.

Let’s take a deeper look at the first goal in my personal list.

GAIN 10 LBS.

It’s too easy and you’re cheating yourself by just writing down your goal and leaving it as that. You have to ask yourself, how will I gain 10 pounds this off-season? Answering these questions will help you expand your goal sheet and create a roadmap for how it’ll be accomplished.

Below is what a piece of my final goal sheet looked like.

GAIN 10 LBS.

As an athlete, many times a well designed strength and conditioning program needs to be part of your action plan. When training properly you’ll be able to work towards accomplishing many things at once. Other than the obvious of getting more jacked a training program will also have many other benefits as you head into your spring season.

1. Get Stronger

If you’re not using progressive overload, you’re missing out. If you’re an athlete between the ages of 14 and your mid-twenties your body is at its peak of hormone production. Testosterone and growth hormone are flooding your bloodstream. Taking advantage of an increased product in these hormones is a wise-decision. Progressively overloading your tissues and nervous system will allow your body to better deal with stress. You want to train to better be able to handle higher volumes and intensities. In short, gradually challenge your body more and more each week and you’ll become stronger and be able to handle increased demands of future training sessions and long seasons.

You also must appreciate that without a good base of strength it will be more difficult for you to improve other fitness qualities. If you were to fill up a bucket with various fitness qualities you can only add so much until nothing else fits. You can either keep trying to force things into an already full bucket or you can GET STRONGER. The stronger you are, the more force you can produce, and the bigger the bucket becomes. Now you have more opportunity to get explosive and increase your speed.

Studies have shown that an increase in bodyweight can lead to an increase in throwing velocity. If you go back to physics class…

F=ma

Force= mass x acceleration. The more mass you have the more force you’ll be able to produce, which means the harder you’ll be able to throw. Obviously, there are other variables, mechanics being one of them. But, if you’re a high school or college player it is likely you’ll be able to pick up a few mph by increasing your weight. Couple your increase in weight with increased strength and power and you’ll now be better at delivering and accepting force, and you’ll be able to mitigate injuries while continuing to throw harder.

Throwing a baseball is one of the most violent and high velocity movements in sport. This is in no way a means to scare you. You just need to appreciate the importance of all of your joints working optimally, so you’re not over-stressing one area over another.

Maybe because of your lack of shoulder external rotation your medial elbow is being stressed much more than it should. Or what if you lack internal rotation in your lead hip and it leads to your shoulder having to work way harder than it should during your delivery.

Making sure you have as much mobility as possible heading into a season is extremely valuable. A smart off-season training program will understand this an incorporate soft-tissue work along with mobility training for your thorax, shoulder girdle, elbow, and wrist.

Along with putting on mass in your glutes, hamstrings, quads, lats, and other prime movers, it is also important to designate time in your training program to train your rotator cuff.

Think of your shoulder joint like a golf ball sitting on a golf tee. It is your cuff that will keep that ball centered on the tee. The better your rotator cuff is at centrating your humeral head in the glenoid fossa the more durable your shoulder becomes. A strong rotator cuff will also help you have better control when decelerating your arm during the follow through of your throw.

5. Create Camaraderie and Develop Good Habits & Routines

The last major benefit of having an off-season strength and conditioning program has less to do with physical gains and more with gains in the mental and emotional realm. Training with teammates is a great way to create camaraderie and build team chemistry as you’re all working hard towards the same team goals.

Knowing that you’re individually prepared is important, but having confidence that your entire team is prepared is powerful.

Developing consistency with an off-season strength and conditioning program is also a sure-fire way to carry good work habits and routines into your spring and summer seasons.

In Summary

A quality off-season strength and conditioning program is one of the most valuable things an athlete can invest in. Take care of your body and put in smart work and you’ll be rewarded when the season rolls around. Even if you’re in high school and are playing a winter sport (which if you’re an underclassman, I highly recommend it) you should still make room for 1-2 strength training sessions to make sure you’re building your base of strength and have adequate ranges of motion.

Start today. Write down your goals, create action plans, and get to work!

Mike Sirani is the Co-Owner of Capital District Sport and Fitness in Round Lake, NY. He’s an experienced strength and conditioning coach and massage therapist who has spent the majority of his career in Boston training professional, collegiate, and high school athletes of various sports, as well as helping general fitness clients of all backgrounds learn to move better and get stronger than ever before. He earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Applied Exercise Science, with a concentration in Sports Performance, from Springfield College and completed a highly sought after six-month internship at Cressey Sports Performance. Mike specializes in teaching athletes and general fitness clients to get the most out of their bodies by enhancing their movement quality and creating exercises programs that allow you to get stronger, faster, and more powerful in a safe and effective manner.